[url=http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080612_one_for_the_constitution/]One for the Constitution[/url]

By Eugene Robinson

WASHINGTON—It shouldn’t be necessary for the Supreme Court to tell the president that he can’t have individuals taken into custody, spirited to a remote prison camp and held indefinitely, with no legal right to argue that they’ve been unjustly imprisoned—not even on grounds of mistaken identity. But the president in question, sigh, is George W. Bush, who has taken a chainsaw to the rule of law with the same manic gusto he displays in clearing brush at his Texas ranch.

So Thursday, for the third and apparently final time, the high court made clear that the Decider has no authority to trash the foundational principles of American jurisprudence. In ruling 5 to 4 that foreigners held at Guantanamo Bay have the right to challenge their detention in federal court, the court cited the Constitution and the centuries-old concept of habeas corpus. Justice Anthony Kennedy’s majority opinion seems broad enough and definitive enough to end the Kafkaesque farce at Guantanamo once and for all.

“The laws and Constitution are designed to survive, and remain in force, in extraordinary times,” Kennedy wrote. Again, it’s amazing that any president of the United States would need to have such a basic concept spelled out for him.

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"Behind every great fortune lies a great crime."Honore de Balzac

"Democrats work to help people who need help. That other party, they work for people who don't need help. That's all there is to it."~Harry S. Truman

_________________"If the people allow private banks to control their currency the banks and corporations will deprive the people of all their property until their children will wake up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered." - Thomas Jefferson